Hope you all 'enjoyed' the above film shown on Thursday 22nd September - although 'enjoyed' is obviously not quite the right word.....! Let's say I hope you all got something from it - it definitely provided food for thought, and I wished we had had more time for discussion after the film. What I wanted to say, was something about what we as individuals can do. I think some of us may have come away feeling frustrated that regenerating the soil is all in the hands of big farmers, many of whom will be resistant to any suggestion of changing their ways. However, we can all do our bit. Those of us with only small gardens, allotments, community gardens or smallholdings, can all be guided by those regeneration techniques (if we're not already!) - because after all, every little patch of healthy soil helps. Permaculture systems, in particular, have for many years included the use of agro-forestry, water management, forest gardening, no-dig, etc., - basically working with nature rather than against it, which is what this is all about.
I would like to add that, having just heard that our wonderful new government is about to do away with the 'Elms' system of giving farmers subsidies to leave some of their land for the wildlife, and to replace it with the old EU system of paying them per acre...... I feel it is even more important to try to do as much as we can to spread the word about regenerative methods. As we heard in the film, adapting farms to these methods does not mean huge investment or loss of income, and in fact saves farmers from the rising costs of fuel and chemicals, not to mention the effects of climate change - and it can be achieved in a very short time. Oh and it might help save the planet too.......🤗